The Toronto Star Let Readers Redesign The Raptors Uniforms

If I’ve learned one thing from watching pro wrestling, it’s that you should never let fans make decisions about the things they’re fans of. It’s just a bad idea. There are hundreds of thousands of college graduates who do freelance design and need work, but can’t get it because a Canadian newspaper would rather say “no, middle-aged housewife who can’t draw stick figures and thinks purple and yellow are the same color, come up with these basketball uniform redesigns for free.”

Case in point: The Toronto Raptors, who have been trying to change their name (and get out of the 1990s) for years. Where did they go when they needed a uniform refresh? WHY, TO THE NEWSPAPER, OF COURSE.

When news leaked that the Toronto Raptors were considering a rebranding some time in the near future, The Toronto Star asked readers to design a new uniform for the Raptors.

The winner of The Star’s redesign contest was unveiled as Matthew Stasyna, and this was his design. (via The Score)

Here’s the design:

Yep.

If that logo looks familiar to you, perhaps you’ll recognize it as the Bone Pillar from the Castlevania series of video games:

The more you try to break from the 90s, the more they pull you back in. Just ask Vanilla Ice.

I feel like we’re just postponing the inevitable, here. The Raptors got a newspaper to redesign their uniforms because they aren’t going to be wearing them much longer. Pretty soon they’ll be the TORONTO CRUSH or whatever, with plain white uniforms and “TORONTO” in arial font across the front in black. Boom, the end.

They call themselves Toronto Wins and they’ll still be a shitty ballteam. This is Toronto’s passive aggressive shot at MLSE for ruining every single franchise they own.

Toronto will never be seen as Canada’s basketball team, hockey team, soccer team or even baseballl team. So they might as well get rid of the red and just go back to the purple and contemporize the Raptor dribbling the ball.

You know who was a Raptors fan growing up? Kevin Durant because of the purple and dinosaur. Go back to what made them an interesting team and maybe they’ll get more players interested in coming?